This invention relates to systems for automated, or computer-controlled, assembly of seamed articles from limp material. In particular, this invention relates to a system for automatically loading limp material segments for assembly by an automated assembly device.
For many years now, conventional assembly line manufacture of seamed articles constructed of limp fabric has incorporated a series of manually controlled assembly operations. Generally tactile presentation and control of the fabric-to-be-joined is made to the joining, or sewing, head under manual control. One drawback of this assembly technique is that the technique is labor intensive; that is, a large portion of the cost for manufacture is spent on labor. To reduce cost, automated or computer-controlled manufacturing techniques have been proposed in the prior art.
The above-referenced patent application and patents disclose a set of assembly-related techniques that are readily adapted for, or particularly useful in the automated assembly of seamed articles from limp material. In particular, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 707,608 discloses an automated seamed garment assembly system which is adapted to receive segments of limp material at a loading table. That system then automatically transports those segments to a folding station, where they are folded so that desired seamed are aligned, and finally presents the folded segments to a seam forming apparatus where the seams are joined, all under machine control. Application Ser. No. 707,608 is incorporated by reference herein.
In the garment assembly field, the limp material segments for an article are generally pre-cut in batches, and stacks of similarly shaped pairs of elements-to-be-joined are typically generated. With the prior art manual assembly techniques, human operators generally select the pairs of elements-to-be-joined and manually control the assembly for the selected pairs, matching color, texture, pattern alignment all by hand. For the prior art automated assembly devices, such as that disclosed in the above-referenced application Ser. No. 707,608, the actual transfer or loading of the limp material segments may also be accomplished manually, for example, by an operator who one-at-a-time loads pairs of elements-to-be-joined to the receiving (or loading) table. With this approach, the operator may use "human" skills in distinguishing and mutually aligning edges, patterns, and colors for various elements-to-be-joined so that those elements may be joined in a desired alignment by subsequent seam-forming operations.
While this manual loading approach is effective, due to human abilities to sort by visual characteristics and to perform manual alignments, a relatively high level of skill is required to accomplish the one pair at a time manual loading. Moreover, this manual loading results in the relatively inefficient use of such human operators since one has to be standing by on a continuous basis to perform the one-at-a-time loading in step with the assembly throughput characteristics of the automated article assembly system.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide an improved system for automatic assembly of seamed articles.
Another object is to provide an improved automated assembly system for seamed articles including an automatic loading assembly for use with an automated seamed article assembly system.
Yet another object is to provide an automated system for selecting the lowermost segment of a shingled stack of limp material segments.